By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The following matches are advertised for the WWE TLC pay-per-view that will be held on December 15 in Minneapolis, Minnesota at Target Center.
-Roman Reigns vs. King Corbin in a TLC match.
-WWE Universal Champion “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt vs. The Miz.
-Big E and Kofi Kingston vs. “The Revival” Scott Dawson and Dash Wilder for the Smackdown Tag Titles.
Powell’s POV: There’s no indication as to whether the Wyatt vs. Miz match is for the WWE Universal Championship. Local advertising has been updated with the switch of Reigns vs. Corbin to a TLC match from the previously advertised tables match, and still includes “The Kabuki Warriors” Kairi Sane and Asuka vs. Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair in a TLC match for the WWE Women’s Tag Titles, and Rusev vs. Bobby Lashley in a standard match. WWE obviously has a lot of work to do to fill out the card next week.
They’re doing the same thing that they did with Hell in a Cell. Horrible promotion and it adversely affected the show when the best two matches were the curtain jerker and the follow up. You’d think they would have learned from that. It worries me as a long time WWF/E supporter that there are only four weeks between Elimination Chamber and Wrestlemania. They have to do their promotion better as well as their scheduling.
They need to cut down to 4-6 PPV events.
Not that few. I think it should be 8 or maybe 9 at the most – that is once every six weeks or thereabouts.
Does the PPV model still matter to WWE? If they dropped down to Royal Rumble, Wrestlemania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, would anyone really miss the other stuff? Do those 4 in January, March/April, July/August, and October/November and fill in some of the other months with bigger house show type events like the Saudi show, an MSG event, and 1-2 others and I’m betting everyone would be fine while Network subscriptions would remain where they are.
Don’t hold your breath, gang. They’ve convinced themselves that more is better. They think they need at least one PPV per month to keep and attract new subscribers. I can live with monthly shows if the product is good, but Smackdown is especially bad these days.
The WWE PPV schedule is too bloated. Maybe that’s partly why their main roster shows are so bad? NXT is great, and it only builds to a few shows a year. I think WWE should do 5 PPVs. Do Royal Rumble, Mania, MITB in early June, Summerslam and then Survivor Series. Let things breathe a little. Right now it feels as if they do 2 shows a month; and I can’t remember what the last one was called, or half the people on it.
MITB is a good keep. They might be able to fit a 6th without too much congestion.
This is one spot where AEW made a really good decision to go with 4.